Abstract

This article discusses aspects of the relationship between the vocalising cellist and the live electronics in Brian Ferneyhough's piece Time and Motion Study II. These include: first, the suggestion that the relation, rather than being oppositional as Ferneyhough himself has suggested, is actually one of a combined cyborg identity, albeit one that will end in mutually assured destruction; and, second, the idea that the electronics act as an 'entropy circuit', both absorbing and preserving the piece's potential gestural energy, and simultaneously guaranteeing that the energy will be exhausted by removing its gestural element.